mopolitan" of habit.

Bird's-foot lotus, another Downside plant, lights up the stones put to
represent rockwork with its yellow. Saxifrage, and stone-crop and
house-leek are here in variety. Buttercups occupy a whole patch--a
little garden to themselves. What would the haymakers say to such a
sight? Little, too, does the mower reck of the number, variety, and
beauty of the grasses in a single armful of swathe, such as he gathers
up to cover his jar of ale with and keep it cool by the hedge. The
bennets, the flower of the grass, on their tall stalks, go down in
numbers as countless as the sand of the seashore before his scythe.

But here the bennets are watched and tended, the weeds removed from
around them, and all the grasses of the field cultivated as
affectionately as the finest rose. There is something cool and pleasant
in this green after the colours of the herbs in flower, though each
grass is but a bunch, yet it has with it something of the sweetness of
the meadows by the brooks. Juncus, the rush, is here, a sign often
welcome to cattle, for they know that water must be near; the bunch is
cut down, and the white pith shows, but it will speedily be up again;
horse-tails, too, so thick in marshy places--one small species is
abundant in the ploughed fields of Surrey, and must be a great trouble
to the farmers, for the land is sometimes quite hidden by it.

In the adjoining water tank are the principal flowers and plants which
flourish in brook, river, and pond. This yellow iris flowers in many
streams about London, and the water-parsnip's pale green foliage waves
at the very bottom, for it will grow with the current right over it as
well as at the side. Water-plantain grows in every pond near the
metropolis; there is some just outside these gardens, in a wet ha-ha.

The huge water-docks in the centre here flourish at the verge of the
adjacent Thames; the marsh marigold, now in seed, blooms in April in the
damp furrows of meadows close up to town. But in this flower-pot, sunk
so as to be in the water, and yet so that the rim may prevent it from
spreading and coating the entire tank with green, is the strangest of
all, actually duckweed. The still ponds always found close to cattle
yards, are in summer green from end to end with this weed. I recommend
all country folk who come up to town in summer time to run down here
just to see duckweed cultivated once in their lives.

In front of an ivy-grown museum there is a